This thread will probably get me shot.......

[mrs_overall]

I have an uncle who was a P.O.W. and was tortured & left disabled by the Japanese. He is 90 and still has screaming nightmares.
I cannot feel a great deal of sympathy for the Japanese at the moment. Does anyone else feel remotely like this?

[Nosha123]

aaah bless him..

I dont feel remotely like that but then dont have such personal experience of something so awful...
I would HOPE that society and human kind has moved on such since then.. well at least the more developed countries....

[trt]

I feel the same way about the Germans.

[Mamyalynne]

There have been threads regarding the position of the older generation who were involved back then, I find that somewhat understandable. However we should realise that this generation has no responsibility for what happened all those years ago.

[Bobbisox]

of cause they do mrs o, those who have this type of connection are bound to :-)

[sara3]

I am genuinely sad for your uncle but no, I don't feel like that.

[mrs_overall]

Don't get me wrong, I am not totally heartless - I had a lump in my throat when that baby was found the other day - but the whole scenario hardly bothers me

[Zeuhl]

No.

Because the Japanese who committed those terrible attrocities are mostly dead and gone.

I can't see why young Japanese who have done us no harm should not receive sympathy on the basis of what their grand parents or great grandparents may or may not have done.
.

[ummmm]

What did the Japanese do to you though?

[jackthehat]

I typed this response on a similar thread...........

I'm fortunate enough to slightly know a survivor of the Japanese.
His eyes were blown out and his hands and forearms were blown off when the Japanese used him as a human mine-sweeper. He is cared for, more or less, solely by his formidable 92 year old wife.

On being asked if he would go to the aid of the Japanese people in this current catastrophe, he replied. "In a heartbeat..............We're not at war with them."

A truly remarkable and humbling man............

[B00]

Errrm, in a way, though I can't bring myself to think any ill will towards the generations that were born since the war, none of the atrocities were of their doing.

However, if im being honest, there's a clip of a couple of dogs, one injured, that got caught up in it over on A&N, that made me cry more than any human story this has produced so far.

[LoftyLottie]

Whilst I sort of understand how you feel Mrs O because you know how it affected your uncle you must try and remember that the vast majority of these poor people were not even born at that time and just thing of all those children that are involved.

Perhaps I should say that I can understand how your uncle feels but not quite so much how you feel.


The sins of the father and all that!

[mrs_overall]

ummmm, nothing directly but having witnessed someone in pain for the whole of my life (they set his legs on fire), I can't help having strong feelings

[chelle7272]

I agree with mamya, whilst I have sympathy with your uncle and others that were affected, how can we place blame on people who were not responsible.

[starone]

I feel very sorry for them and don't forget the two atomic bombs dropped on them but at the same time I can understand Mrs O's sentiments as I had a friend who came back from being a Japanese prisoner of war and he was unrecognisable as the chap who went away. He looked more like a skeleton with skin stretched over than a human being and never fully recovered.

[micmak]

When I was young it was called 'Paying for the sins of the fathers' I do not have a problem with any race, colour or creed.

[NoMercy]

Those who are alive and suffering right now are not the same people who committed those atrocities. Same nation, different generation entirely.

[LoftyLottie]

BOO, I daren't have admitted that about the dogs. But I felt as you do. Perhaps it's because they have no way of understanding what on earth is going on that we feel as we do. People will take in the children but the dogs will be left to fend for themselves.

[Zeuhl]

<<I can't help having strong feelings >>

Towards the people who hurt your uncle?

Or to people in japan now who had nothing to do with it?
.